Scarlet in the Snow
by Vigs-the-Explorer
Summary: Members of enemy races have come together to fight a common enemy in Northrend, but hatred still runs deep.


Vigs the warlock was not the sort of person who smiled very often. Mainly because she was rarely happy, of course, but also because it tended to split her lip open, and she hated having to sew it back together. Her relatively unmarked face was a rare thing among the Forsaken, and she was rather proud of it.

Still, though, she couldn't keep the smile from her face as she rode away from Light's Trust. The Argent Crusade had been everything she had heard it was; they were as relentless against the Scourge as her own people, and readily accepted the Forsaken among them. Even members of other Horde races tended to treat their Undead allies with some degree of suspicion; the Crusaders' only question was "Will you fight?" It was positively refreshing. Perhaps humans weren't all as prejudiced and unthinkingly cruel as she had thought, she mused as she rode. They did form the core of the Crusade. Suddenly, a scream came from the woods beside the road.

"Help! Help!" someone called in Common. It sounded like a young woman.

If it hadn't been for the unusually charitable feelings inspired by the Argents, Vigs would probably have ignored the calls and continued riding. Instead, she turned her Dreadsteed off the path to ride between the trees.

She reached a clearing, and saw that a polar bear was closing in on a young human woman with long blonde hair. The woman had a sword, but did not appear to know how to use it very well. Her clothing was already bloodstained, and her arm bled freely; it looked as though the polar bear had landed a swing or two. It would be over soon, Vigs could tell, unless she intervened.

She jumped off the horse and quickly summoned her Felguard, Bleekfazag. With a thought she sent him charging at the polar bear, while she cursed it to weaken its attacks. In just seconds, the threatened young woman was blinking down at a dead bear.

"Hello," Vigs said, trying to remember how to speak Common. The girl looked over at her, and was suddenly more afraid than before, if that was possible.

Vigs sighed. It was difficult to be reassuring when you were rotting. She dismissed Bleekfazag, hoping that it would be easier to calm the girl without a demon towering over her.

"It's all right, girl," she said, trying to force her rusty voice into gentleness. "I'm not going to hurt you. I'm with the Argent Crusade." It wasn't quite true—she respected them, but not enough to give up her duties to the Forsaken and the Horde to follow them—but she hoped that it would reassure the girl. "Here, let me put a bandage on that arm."

The girl continued to point her sword at Vigs with shaking arms, clearly terrified.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Vigs told her, growing impatient. "Really, if you can't even deal with a polar bear, you shouldn't be in Northrend."

"I wanted to help," the girl whispered. Vigs had to strain to hear her. "I wanted to help fight the dead ones."

"You can't do any good against the Scourge if they kill you as well," Vigs said bluntly. "In fact, you'd end up helping them, if you know what I mean. Now let me put this bandage on you." She moved towards the girl, but was stopped short by a clumsy sword swing. The girl was shaking so badly that she dropped the sword.

"You're dead," the girl said.

"I am quite aware of that, missy," Vigs snapped. "If you want to join the Argent Crusade, you'd better get used to it. Quite a few of the Forsaken have joined up. Now give me your arm. I'm trying to help you."

The girl slowly reached out her arm, though she flinched when Vigs touched her. Vigs fought the urge to tie the bandage on roughly. The girl was young and afraid, she knew.

"My name is Vigs," she told the girl as she worked. "What's yours?"

"Selena," she said quietly. Her arm shook, from the cold and from fear, Vigs could tell.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Selena. I would take you to Light's Trust, but you're in no shape to help them, and they can't spare anyone to take care of you. And I don't think you want to go to Venomspite." Vigs couldn't help but chuckle, picturing the timid girl's reaction to the Forsaken settlement. Selena flinched away from the harsh sound. Vigs set her teeth and ignored it, finishing with the bandage.

"Where would you like me to take you?" she asked. "The Wyrmrest Temple? That's neutral."

The girl swayed on her feet when Vigs let go of her, and didn't answer. Oh, right. Cold and blood loss did have a negative effect on living humans. Vigs lowered her to the ground as well as she could, and sighed. She dug out a healthstone and pressed it into the girl's hand, muttering the words that activated it. A bit of color returned to Selena's cheeks, but she was still only half-conscious and her lips were blue.

"Have to get to New Hearthglen," she muttered, half-aware, then dropped into unconsciousness.

Vigs looked at her sharply. Well, well. She wasn't a well-intentioned but unprepared youngster off to join the Argent Crusade…she was a budding Scarlet. Perhaps Vigs would have noticed earlier, if the girl hadn't been covered in blood, that her clothing was entirely red.

She almost got up and left the girl to freeze in the snow. Like all Forsaken, she hated the Scarlet Onslaught with a passion. Killing them was as satisfying as killing members of the Scourge; or perhaps more so, since they had chosen to become what they were, while individual Scourge members were mostly mindless pawns.

A silly idea popped into her mind, then. What if she could convince this budding mortophobe that the Forsaken were not the enemy, by helping her? Perhaps she would go back to Alliance lands and spread the word of her undead savior, bringing more of them over to the cause of the Argents.

She snorted. It seemed pretty unlikely. But she would hate to have wasted all this time and energy—not to mention a bandage and a healthstone. Fine. She would help the girl.

She gathered some fallen sticks and built a fire beside the unconscious girl. Half-remembered survival lessons from her living life came back to her; she ought to use her body heat to warm the Selene, but of course, she had none. She covered the girl with collected scraps of fur clothing and frostweave, hoping that it would be enough. It would be a shame for the girl to die now.

After that, she knew that all she could do was wait.

Another polar bear came calling while she waited for Selene to wake up, but she was able to send it packing without summoning Bleekfazag again. Other than that, the wait was exceptionally boring. Watching color slowly return to the girl's cheeks was like watching grass grow. She made some soup for when Selene awoke.

Finally, late in the evening, the girl stirred, and then opened her eyes. She looked around in confusion, which became fear when she saw Vigs watching her.

"Eat this," Vigs said curtly, handing her the soup. Saving a Scarlet's life was more than enough to ask; she didn't have to be polite about it.

"You'll poison me," the girl whispered. That was the last straw.

"Dammit, child, I saved you from a polar bear, from bleeding out, and from hypothermia. Why in Sylvanus' name would I poison you now?" she demanded.

"I don't know. Maybe…maybe I'll taste better."

Vigs winced slightly. Yes, all right, she had eaten a few Scarlet Crusaders in her time, but who hadn't? She certainly wasn't going to eat this one.

"I'm not going to eat you, you foolish girl. Eat the damn soup. If I wanted you dead I'd just kill you."

Selene took the bowl with shaking hands, and took a cautious sip, then another. Her eyes never left Vigs.

Vigs made an effort to blink a few times. It unsettled the living, she knew, to meet an unblinking stare. Perhaps every little bit would help.

"Why are you helping me?" Selene asked when she finished the soup.

"I assumed you were with the Argent Crusade," Vigs admitted. "By the time I realized you weren't, well, I'd spent so much time on you that I thought I'd see it through."

Selene looked at her in confusion.

"Then…it's true that the Argent Crusaders are your allies in evil?"

Vigs snorted.

"They're my allies in fighting the Scourge," she explained as patiently as she could. "I hate the Scourge. They hate the Scourge. You hate the Scourge. No reason we can't all be friends."

Selene shook her head firmly.

"You're trying to lure me from the path of righteousness," she said. "They told me that would happen. The walking dead are an abomination against the Light."

"Well, right now I'm sitting," Vigs said sarcastically. "Are the sitting dead an abomination?"

"I shouldn't listen to you," Selene told her. "I must close my ears to your lies."

"What is wrong with you Scarlets?" Vigs burst out. "I may not be breathing, but I can think, I can speak. I'm no slave to the Lich King, I'm his enemy! Why does the fact that I don't have a pulse cancel all of that out?" She stood up and stomped a little bit away, trying to calm herself. She thought that she'd accepted the prejudice that Forsaken had to face long ago, but she'd let the Argent Crusaders get her hopes up.

Well, she'd learned her lesson. She and the foolish girl would part ways, and one day when Selene had learned a thing or two, perhaps they would meet on the battlefield, and Vigs would have a chance to rectify her mistake.

A sound came from behind her, and she turned. Selene was laboriously getting to her feet, using her sword to prop herself up. Once she reached her feet, she raised the weapon and pointed it at Vigs, though her arm shook with the effort.

"What on earth are you doing?" Vigs asked. "You couldn't even handle a polar bear. Do you really think you stand a chance against me?"

"The Light will guide my blade," Selene said, and swung. Vigs stepped aside easily.

"Don't be a fool," she said. "We'll go our separate ways. You go back to the mainland and learn how to actually use that thing. Then you can come and find me."

"You have tainted me," Selene said through gritted teeth. "I must make it right. I must cleanse the world of your evil."

She swung again. Vigs easily pulled the blade from her hand and tossed it aside. Without another word, she grabbed her bag and began to walk away.

"Don't leave!" Selene cried. "Kill me!"

Vigs halted, sure that she had not heard right, or that her rusty knowledge of Common was misleading her.

"What did you say?"

"Kill me!" The girl was actually crying.

"Why on Azeroth would you want me to do that?"

"You wouldn't leave me alive unless it was to do some evil work for you, unknowingly," Selene said. A wild light entered her eyes.

"What? That's ridiculous," Vigs protested.

The girl ignored her and knelt, picking her sword up off the ground.

"Light, guide my blade," she whispered. She put the hilt of her sword on the ground in front of her and the point against her chest.

"Wait, what are you doing? Don't do that!" Vigs hurried forward.

"You'll never have my soul, demon!" the girl cried, throwing herself onto the sword. For a moment, she coughed blood, and then she was gone.

Vigs looked at the scene in front of her for a long moment. The girl's blood turned the snow scarlet, and her blonde hair fanned out around her head like a flower. It was almost pretty, in a macabre way, and who appreciated the macabre better than the Forsaken?

Finally, she muttered a few words and a fire sprang up around the body. The Scourge would not gain another soldier because Vigs had foolishly kept the girl out of a polar bear's belly. She summoned her Dreadsteed and rode the rest of the way to Venomspite, without so much as a hint of a smile.

* * *

Author's Note: There are a lot of great stories on this site about people from opposite factions saving one another's lives and becoming friends. I really like those stories, but I thought I'd do something a little different. And yes, Vigs is my WoW character, so she's a complete self-insertion Mary Sue. I make no apologies. Victory for Sylvanus.


End file.
